Spells for Forgetting(50)

The taste of smoke still coated my tongue as I tucked the letter against my nightgown. Beneath it, my heart was racing. A fleeting thought skipped through my mind as I watched him on the other side of the window. August’s mouth pressed to Lily’s. His hands around her neck.

I pinched my eyes closed, trying to erase the image. I crossed the living room, pulling the door open, and August left one foot on the bottom step as he looked up at me. The shoulders of his jacket glistened with the rain.

“Hey.” He swallowed. “I was just going to tell you that Zach came by. The burial is tomorrow at two.”

My hand tightened around the edge of the door as he came one step higher. I didn’t know if it was because I was scared of him or if I was just scared of what might happen if I was close enough to touch him.

“You asked me to let you know, so…”

“Thanks.”

My gaze went across the road and I tried to make out the shape of August’s house set back in the woods. But it was dark, invisible. The sound of wind in the branches and water running in rivulets down the road cloaked the island in a hush. But I could almost feel it—someone watching. If anyone saw him here, I would never hear the end of it.

His eyes traveled past me, to the inside of the house. “Your dad said he’s living over at the fishing cabin.”

“Yeah. He moved out there after Mom died. It’s just me here now.”

He nodded. “I thought maybe Dutch lived here, too.”

The comment caught me so off guard that my cheeks instantly flushed. “No. He’s got a place over by Nixie’s.”

He studied me, considering whether to ask more questions. I could see them stirring in his eyes. That much about him hadn’t changed. But I didn’t like that I could still read him like that. He was a language I hadn’t forgotten.

“Sorry, it’s none of my business,” he said.

It wasn’t. So why did I feel like I’d somehow been caught?

“When do you leave?” I asked, hoping it sounded like an innocent curiosity.

Part of me knew that the sooner August was gone, the better. Things would go back to normal with Dutch, even if our normal wasn’t what either of us really wanted, and the town would eventually put the past back to sleep. But there was still the letter. There were still Eloise’s words. And I didn’t know what to do with them.

A glow of light flared behind the trees in the distance and I stilled, my eyes scanning the dark. When I saw it again, I sucked in a breath, my hand slipping from the doorknob.

Across the road, a bright amber flash twisted in the wind. The same light that I’d seen that night at the orchard. Fire.

“August.” The word was a breath.

He turned, searching the darkness, and the light appeared again. A tall, writhing flame. A sound escaped his lips that I couldn’t make out, and he took off, feet hitting the gravel as he ran.

I let the quilt slip from my shoulders and fall to the ground before I snatched the phone up from the table by the sofa. A moment later, August had disappeared on the other side of the road.

“August!” My bare feet took me down the steps, and then I was running after him. Past the gate. Into the trees.

I followed the sound of his footsteps up the path toward the cottage. I’d lost sight of him by the time I passed the hedge and I came to a stop when I saw it.

It wasn’t the house. It was the truck.

I took the last few steps and August appeared on the other side of the trees, at the mouth of the drive. He stood there, frozen, as the glow painted half his stricken face in light. The entire truck was engulfed in flames, filling the air with thick smoke.

“What…how?” I stammered, breathing so hard that my head was light.

“Bastards.” He pushed into the bushes that lined the house, yanking the water hose free. The spigot turned with a rusted squeak and he came back with it running.

I tried to catch him by the arm as he walked toward the truck, but he pulled free of my hands. He shielded his face, spraying the hood, but the flames only grew, reaching up over our heads and touching the lowest branches of the pines. From where he stood, he was only a moving black shape against the light. But it was no use trying to put it out. The entire cab was burning.

“Get back!”

The blaze swelled on the passenger side and the window shattered. But he only moved closer.

“August!” I stumbled forward and wrapped my arms around him, using all my weight to pull him backward.

When I got him into the grass, I put myself between him and the truck, holding tightly to his shirt with both fists. “Are you crazy?”

August’s eyes focused on me, as if he was only just remembering that I was there. His chest rose and fell under my hands and he stared at them before his gaze slowly rose to meet mine. I could feel his heart beating beneath my fingers.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” I shoved him hard.

He dropped the hose and the cold water pooled around my feet as the fire’s heat stung my skin, giving me goosebumps beneath my nightgown. Standing there in front of him, with that look on his face, was like being eighteen years old again. The feeling put knots in my stomach.

The phone shook in my hands as I found Jake’s name, but there was no service. I pushed past August, watching the bars with my breath fogging in the cold, and when one finally appeared, I hit dial.